POST JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL.
Preparations for the start—Costume—Chaff bed—First fall—Extra
luggage—The whip—Stages and their length—Appearance of
the country, and climate—First stage—Turk guides—Welcome
rest—Weighing fire-wood—Meana bug—Turcomanchai—Distances—New
friends—Palace of Kerrij.
At Julfa, on the Araxes—a muddy stream, when we were there, easily
fordable—is the Persian frontier, and here our horse-journey was to
begin. The tarantass was sold a bargain to the postmaster. A change
of clothes and boots and a few flannel shirts were stuffed in the
“koorjins,” or saddle-bags, made of rough carpet; boots were greased and
put on, so were spurs; and I, in my innocence, at the instigation of the
saddler, who I suppose wished to get rid of them, had provided myself
with a pair of huge long brass ones, such as were worn by the barons
of melodrama, and palmed off on me as real Mexican persuaders adapted
for long journeys—these awful things the Colonel suggested I should do
without, but I did not like to be shorn of any of my splendour, and I
wore them. At first I spurred myself considerably when walking, but I
got over this, and no doubt they added to the picturesqueness of my
get-up. Fur-cap, “horsey” box-cloth pilot-jacket, with big horn buttons,
cords and boots, also a huge courier’s whip and fur gloves, made, to my
youthful mind, a striking picture, and I greatly appreciated myself.
At Tiflis we had provided ourselves with bags, some seven feet long and
four feet wide—these bags were to be filled with chaff, of which there is
an abundance, at each station. It is called “kah,” and is the ordinary
horse-feed, some of it being always in the manger; at this the Persian
horse persistently munches; when he has had a bellyful of it he gets his
morning or evening feed—never before. This rather primitive mattress is
soft, cool in summer, warm in winter, free from insects, _and there is no
bed to carry_.
We each carried a small washing-basin of brass; we had also a teapot and
two tin plates. I had a wonderful expanding cup which I used to fill
with wine, but, before I had time to drink, it generally collapsed, so I
soon flung it away. We carried a few packets of candles; and, having our
chaff-bags filled, we retired early, to begin on the morrow our first
day’s posting. To my companion, an old traveller, this was nothing, but I
looked forward to it with mixed feelings of delight and awe.
Apparently in the dead of night—really at dawn—I saw the Colonel dressed
and busy; I hurried on my clothes, bundled my few odds and ends into
my saddle-bags, rolled up my rugs into a cylinder, with the waterproof
one outside, swallowed as many cups of hot tea as I could hold (it was
terribly cold), reluctantly put my long brass spurs away—the Colonel told
me I should only find them in my way—and dragged my various impedimenta
into the yard.
The fact was that, with our heavy baggage, which quite loaded one of
the horses, which was to be led, we were unable to take more than
one servant. To be without one when posting in Persia is extremely
inconvenient. Of course, if speed is a great object, a man gets along
much faster without a servant, but then he has to do everything for
himself, and to _know how to do it_.
After some three-quarters of an hour we managed to get the baggage-horse
loaded with two portmanteaux, and our own beasts saddled; the koorjins,
or saddle-bags, put on across the loins of the horses, and firmly secured
by a strap passing from the bottom of each bag to the girths. This is
most important to prevent the shaking up together of everything the
saddle-bags may contain.
My “Dayrell” bridle was fitted with a common watering bit, and as the
horses of Persia are accustomed to a very severe native machine, my
melancholy animal, as soon as he had been lashed into a canter, bolted,
and was only brought to a stop by his coming down on his nose, which he
did after some quarter of a mile. Of course, with such a bit, it was
quite impossible to pull him up. As usual, though we fell with a crash,
no one was hurt. I struggled to my feet, but the pony lay quite still,
as if injured, till the “shargird chupper,” or horse-boy, on his arrival,
by a few vigorous kicks caused him to get up and shake himself. The
Colonel now advised me to take the native bridle used by the shargird,
and with this, of course, I could easily command my pony.
Several times we had to stop to arrange the load of the pack-horse, and
also to alter the contents of our saddle-bags. These should be so packed
as to be of nearly exactly equal weight, as when they are not so they
gradually slip round, and one’s horse stops; when one finds one bag under
his belly, the other on his crupper.
The ordinary chuppering kit of saddle, rugs, and bags is well suited for
this kind of travelling, but we had besides a led horse, a tin cocked-hat
case, a leather hat-box, and a sword and umbrella of the Colonel’s.
Our shargird, after many attempts to manage differently, fixed the tin
cocked-hat case to his saddle, _en croupe_, tied the leather hat-box
on as a knapsack behind his shoulders, and carried the sword under the
surcingle of his saddle.
We kept on at a smart canter, only stopping to fix or shift the loads of
the various animals. As soon as we were a mile or two from the station
the shargird ceased to lead the baggage-horse; he had been compelled to
do so till then, as he would have turned back.
The cantering through the cold air was exhilarating; and now I had
time to look at the country—_Persia at last!_—which I was to inhabit
for three years certain. I found that the road, if such it could be
called, simply consisted of a number of tracks across country, which
ran along irregularly side by side, formed by the wear of strings of
mules and camels; there was no road _in our sense of the term_; in fact,
the judicious thing seemed to be to go as straight ahead as one could,
avoiding bad bits by a curve, and keeping to the most worn portion of the
track, unless it was deep in mud or water. The ponies did not require
much urging, and I found it expedient to keep my big chupper whip quiet,
till I had learnt how to use it with ease and effect.
This whip is provided with a short stick of hard and heavy wood, covered
with leather, and having a big loop of the same, that it may hang at the
wrist when not in use.
The lash is a round one of four thongs of Hamadan leather plaited, and is
from four to seven feet long; when the latter, it is reduced in actual
length to about three and a half feet by plaiting the lash from the
stick downwards for about two feet; it ends in a knot, and beyond this
are two flat pieces of leather some six inches long, which the expert
keeps flicking under the horse’s nose; thus, without hurting the horse or
tiring himself, letting him be aware of the punishment in store for the
lazy being at hand.
The stages are from three to eight farsakhs in length, a farsakh being
in the rough three and a half miles; they vary in different parts of the
country, and are especially long between Teheran and Hamadan, some of the
seven-farsakh stages being, in the opinion of those who have been often
over them, thirty miles and more.
The average stage is, however, five farsakhs, and from one large city to
another, as Tabriz to Teheran, Teheran to Ispahan, or Ispahan to Shiraz,
this reckoning holds good. As a rule, a very short stage has a very bad
road, a very long one a good one; but this is not invariable. The first
and last stage of a long journey, too, is as a rule a very short one, as
Persians like, in marching, to have the first stage a short one, that
omissions may be replaced before definitely starting, and the caravan got
together well outside the town. The last stage being a short one enables
friends to receive them, makes it easier to put on good clothes and to
brush up after the journey—in fact, to arrive in a presentable condition.
All around us were earth-hills, with quantities of loose stones on them;
here and there patches of snow; in the distance, in every direction,
we were surrounded by snow-covered mountains; but the sky was blue and
cloudless, the air was pure and dry. As it got warmer and warmer we felt
a sense of freedom, and that a change for the better had been made from
the noisy and stifling tarantass.
Our guide now began to shout “Yawash!” (gently), and “Nuffus! nuffus!”
(breath), and the Colonel intimated to me that we must walk our animals
to give them their second wind. This we did, and we jogged along easily
till within some six miles of the post-house. Then the guide rushed to
the front, the ponies did their best, and it appeared the correct thing
to get them along as fast as possible. The fact was that we had very
good horses, so that as we cantered up to the post-house, having done our
stage of six farsakhs (twenty-one miles) in three hours, we felt that the
Colonel, being burdened with a greenhorn and a lot of extra luggage, had
not done badly.
And now I thought that I had fairly earned a rest and something to eat.
I was hungry and rather tired, for, being determined to get no cropper,
unless my beast came down as well, I had used my knees too much. Your
experienced chupper merely rides by balance, to avoid tiring himself.
What, then, was my disgust at seeing the Colonel order out more horses at
once, and to see him set to to help with the saddling. I groaned in the
spirit, and did the same; though it was with some doubt that I agreed to
the proposition that “it was very lucky we got horses, and could get on
at once.”
The Colonel explained to me that, in travelling “chupper” (or post), it
was incumbent on the traveller _never_ to stop during the day, at least
when he could get horses. This is doubtless a safe rule, but a corollary
should be added that, unless the country is very safe indeed, it is as
well, unless very urgent, not to go on after sunset. To a neglect of this
latter rule I must put down my falling into the hands of robbers during
the famine.
I now found out what it was to get a really rough and bad horse; this
beast’s only pace was a hard trot, and the amount of shaking was
tremendous. The road was much as before, and the going was fairly good.
On reaching the next stage I was heartily glad to find there were no
horses, which gave us time to get some tea, and a breakfast of hard eggs
and harder biscuits. It was two ere we could make a start, and I did not
forget to change my steed, and profited considerably; but the shaking had
been severe, and I felt very stiff and tired. I was, however, ashamed to
say so, and I chimed in with my companion in his praises of the delights
of posting, and the glorious freedom of travel in the East.
Though the Colonel was a good Persian scholar, he could not make much
of the guides and post-house keepers, who are all Turks; and very few
of them speak Persian, Turkish being the language of the country. It is
not till some four stages past Tabriz that Persian is the dialect of the
peasant.
The reigning family, too, affect to think and speak in Turkish with their
relatives and families; but it is not the Turkish of Constantinople,
but the rougher speech of Tabriz, the cause being probably that at some
period of their early life they have resided at Tabriz, where nothing
else but Turkish is spoken; of course, it is also their ancestral tongue.
We got safely to our third post-house, at half-past three, got fresh
horses, and started. The warmth of the last two stages had ceased, and
patches of snow were getting more frequent; but I felt, though sorely
against the grain, that as long as the Colonel would go on I ought not to
object, under penalty of being thought a muff. Our steeds were bad; we
couldn’t get more than a walk out of them, and we were six hours doing
the stage, which we reached chilled to the bone. I was indeed delighted
to hear from the Colonel that “it was hardly worth while pushing on!”
and as I scrambled into the bare and blackened room which the postmaster
allotted to us, and busied myself in getting a light, I was grateful that
even the Colonel’s ideas of duty were satisfied. Of course, afterwards,
such a day’s posting came to be looked on as a joke; but sixty-eight
miles, over bad roads, to a man not accustomed to the saddle, is a
serious matter.
Our first care was to get the postmaster, a poor ragged fellow, to light
a fire of brushwood; a fierce blaze that thoroughly warmed the room, and
at the same time filled the place with smoke, was the result. Then he
bethought him that the chimney was stopped up with a brick; the brick was
removed, and more brushwood put on. Then he gave us a carpet on loan,
brought some firewood and the scales to weigh it; the weights were big
stones, the scales two baskets slung on a stick.
There were recesses some yard from the ground all round the room, which
was some eight feet by twelve. The floor was earth, the walls mud, the
roof big poles with branches of trees laid across them. In the recesses
we stuck three candles. The walls and roof were polished black from the
smoke of many fires. In the part of the room near the door were flung our
saddles and luggage. No furniture of any kind; we got the bullock-trunk
forward to use as a table.
The shargird chupper brought our chaff-bags filled, and laid one on
either side of the fireplace as a mattress; we laid our rugs, and put
our saddle-bags for pillows. We made a big fire, borrowed a kettle, got
some strong tea under weigh, enjoyed a dinner of cold fowl and biscuit;
barricaded our door, which seemed merely three planks nailed together,
and lay down to sleep like tops. The naib, or postmaster, replaced the
brick, and the ashes of our fire were alight in the morning. I _never_
enjoyed a night’s rest so much. But at 5 A.M. there was the Colonel with
the tea under weigh, and adjuring me to rise.
Up I got, gobbled down some hot tea, and we started in the snow at six,
for it had come down heavily in the night.
Ah, it _was_ cold! and hardly light, the horses trying to turn back as
we followed at a snail’s pace the shargird, who seemed not to know much
of the road. In a few minutes I was sitting on alternate hands in a vain
attempt to keep them warm. We had fortunately taken the precaution to put
on big Turkish wool socks over our boots, and this kept our feet from
freezing, for the cold stirrup-iron soon, in such weather, extracts any
warmth from the feet.
At last the light came, and we could see the village and post-house, some
half-mile off, after an hour’s wandering; but we were on the road, which
was something. And now that we could see to go, and the shargird was sure
of the way, off we went at the usual pace, a smart gallop. Nine o’clock
brought us to the next stage—five farsakhs.
We reached Meana, at which there is a fine new post-house, at about
five, but we had arranged that, unless we were compelled to sleep at
this place, we would avoid it, as the celebrated so-called _bug of
Meana_ is found here. During the whole time I have resided in Persia I
never could find any one who had suffered any ill effects from the bite
of the “Meana bug” at all in proportion to the horrors narrated; and I
must look on the description given by travellers as apocryphal: Eastwick
dilates on it. The kenneh, or camel-tic, certainly causes a particularly
irritating wound, which will be found fully described further on. But the
“Meana bug,” I am inclined to think, is nothing more than an ordinary
camel- or perhaps sheep-tic, and by no means dangerous to life (_pace_
Eastwick). But we both at that time were inclined to believe that there
_was something_ in the terrible accounts given of the insect, and so we
avoided Meana. As it was we made a very great mistake; Meana, having
at that time a brand-new post-house, was quite safe; but as we pushed
on darkness caught us, and we did not arrive till nearly ten at night
at Turcomanchai. Here was an old caravanserai only to put up in; the
post-house was in ruins. And on the Colonel asking the postmaster if he
had many insects he shrugged his shoulders in a significant manner.
We found a French merchant, with a big box of valuables, in the blackened
cell of the doorway appropriated to posting travellers. He was marching,
but had taken the room as the only water- and wind-tight one, and he
welcomed us to a share of it and his big fire. It was very cold outside,
and we were glad to get to the grateful warmth and partake of a cup of
tea. But we had not been in the place half an hour when we found that it
was literally alive. We couldn’t go on, and there was no other place to
go to.
I throw a veil over our sufferings. How we regretted the clean new
post-house at Meana, and how glad we were to leave Turcomanchai[2] at the
earliest break of dawn! The insects, however, were merely fleas, B flats,
and those nameless to ears polite.
There was little or no snow on the road as we started, but it was
sufficiently cold; the roads were hard, good, but full of loose stones.
Such was the journey—each day a repetition of that before it, varied only
in weather.
February 12, after going 480 miles chupper, we were met about twenty
miles from Teheran by Major S⸺, the director of the Persian telegraph
department, Mr. B⸺, my medical chief, and Messrs. T⸺ and M⸺, secretaries
of the English Legation, all friends of Colonel G⸺’s.
They escorted us to a place called Kerrij, a palace of the Shah’s, gave
us a sumptuous dinner, and we lay down to sleep in huge rooms gay with
paint, gilding, and coloured glass. A mighty brew of egg-flip prevented a
wakeful night; and the next morning we rode over a muddy plain to Major
S⸺’s house in Teheran, which was to be my home till I started for “down
country.”